Nursing Reflection

Throughout my time on the Mother Baby Care Unit, I have faced many instances in which I have been able to reflect on both my patients and the care that I was providing them. One situation in particular that I found myself critically reflecting upon involved a new mother who was feeling slightly stressed about being discharged as her newborn son would not be going home with her. For confidentiality reasons, this patient will be given the pseudonym of Kayla for the remainder of this reflection.

In today’s world, where globalization and the internet has shrunken spaces and reduced distances, it is only natural that we come across people of different cultures living in harmony. As a nurse practitioner, one experiences several circumstances where the patients are from different cultural backgrounds, varied religious beliefs and also from the other part of the world. While a nursing practitioner has a challenge of treating every patient with utmost care and concern, there are times where our strengths and beliefs come in between our duty (Maier-Lorentz, 2008). A nurse practitioner might have to face situations where they might not have any control over, and still should show their best face. This is where their values, beliefs and behaviors might help them to achieve the impossible.

Critical reflection is vital to develop evidence based practice for safe and quality approaches to professional nursing practice. Nursing professionals should critically reflect on events to identify what health professionals might do to improve their practice and reduce the risk of a similar error. Reflective practice can help to learn from their mistakes, be empowered and most importantly to deliver best possible care to patient as nurses must work closely with their patients to develop a therapeutic relationship. Critical reflection is a valuable skill to ensure patient centred care. This practice promotes personal development by enhancing students’ self-awareness, their sense of community, and their sense of their own capacities for

Reflection is a process of exploring and examining ourselves, our perspectives, attributes, experiences and actions / interactions. It helps us gain insight and see how to move forward (Nursing Times 2018). I believe reflection is particularly important when it comes to Nursing, as medicine is constantly changing/ improving and us ourselves medical professionals must adapt with the changes in medicine. I find that reflection is extremely useful in doing this as we can look over procedures or experiences that we have had, how that made us feel, whether we would change anything, then in the future we can see the changes that may have been made, whether this has changed our feelings and opinions on medical practice.

Skin integrity is an important concept that’s nurses assess on their patients. A key skill in nursing practice is to frequently assess the skin for possible breakdown or decreased skin integrity. Skin assessments should be conducted thoroughly once a shift and frequently reassessed for any signs of change. Skin discrepancies may be the first sign of an underlying issue. Early detection of any breakdown can help to implement interventions sooner. Unfortunately, unless there is a major skin discrepancy, skin issues can easily get overlooked, specifically in documentation and report. The focus of this paper is to research new skin integrity assessments to improve documentation effect and accuracy, resulting in decreased prevalence of skin breakdown in hospitalized patients. Topics discussed include reviewing current practices and new skin assessment techniques that decrease the prevalence of skin breakdown and pressure ulcers.

This essay will discuss a clinical skill in which I have become competent in practicing as a student nurse.

This objective will affect my future nursing practice because conducting physical head to toe assessments and obtaining vital signs is a different process when working with paediatric patients rather than adults. It is crucial to note any changes that I can catch throughout my assessments, and vital signs since paediatric patients might not be able to communicate with me if they feel any changes in their health. By understanding the anatomy and physiology, the developmental stages of children, and obtaining accurate vital signs and assessments, it will increase my knowledge, skill, ad judgment to successfully complete and distinguish any abnormities and changes during my assessments. Also, knowing the developmental stages and distraction therapy method techniques can help me provide thorough examinations and find ways to help my patients cope if they are feeling anxious and scared.

As a member of the Somerset County School Nurse Association, I learned about the meeting by email from the coordinator of the meeting, Carolyn Seracka.

The following essay is a reflective account on an event that I, a student nurse encountered whilst on my second clinical placement in my first year of study. The event took place in a Fountain Nursing Home in Granite City. I have chosen to give thought to the event described in this essay as I feel that it highlights the need for nurses to have effective communication skills especially when treating patients that are suffering with a mental illness. Upon arriving to the Nursing home for the second time on Thursday November 14,2013; assigned the same patient as before. On meeting my patient the first thing I noticed myself doing without even thinking about it was giving her a visual inspection. Before nursing school I never really looked at

She was shaking uncontrollably. Her eyes glowed bright red as waterfalls emerged from her face as she began to explain her predicament. “I’m so scared, and I can’t tell my momma.” At the age of 13, my friend confessed that she was pregnant, and she was thinking about getting an abortion. Being a child myself, I did the only thing I know how to do –comfort her. This experience taught me that sometimes silence is more important than having a reaction. Whether a friend or patient, physicians are responsible for displaying empathy towards their patients during their journey through unfamiliar, life-altering circumstances even if that just means listening.

The objective of this reflection is to explore and reflect upon a situation from a clinical placement on an orthopedic unit. The incident showed that I did not provide safe, timely and competent care for my patient when the oxygen saturation was low. Furthermore, this reflection will include a description of the incident, and I will conclude with explaining what I have learned from the experience and how it will change my future actions.

Given that this was my first attempt at a therapeutic dialog, I feel that I have a good grasp on how to effectively speak to patients. Often in my every day, life I tend to belittle others feelings by saying “everything will be okay” and I made sure to avoid that in this conversation. One thing that I definitely need to work on is becoming more comfortable with periods of silence. Also, I recognize that this was not a complete therapeutic exchange because I did not have a termination phase of the interaction. I would have better served this patient by discussing a plan for coping with anxiety in the future. Overall, I was relaxed and genuine during this conversation and I feel that both the patient and I benefited from this

The Royal College of Nursing defines reflection as the process of thinking deeply with the purpose of understanding (RCN 2013). Reflection is a way people recollect, think and evaluate their knowledge which is a vital part of learning. (Boud et al cited in Royal College of Nursing). Reflection allows us to be conscious of any form of discrimination. It enables learning from mistakes and prevents future occurrence (RCN 2013). In addition, Jasper et al (2013) looks at reflection as a way professionals learn through various experiences in their role. They also went further to say, for development to happen in our roles as professionals, there is the need for continuous process of building our knowledge.

Throughout the course that I am studying I have appreciated the topics that I have studied formerly and have a passion to study more this year. Taking part in this course have given me the knowledge that I am going to be challenged and has also helped me which could come handy in university. I have decided that I would like to apply for the General Nursing course. I have made this decision as I am passionate about this topic. During my time on this course I have worked in three health and social care settings. Throughout my first year on BTECT Health and Social Care Level 2 and throughout my first year of BTEC Health and Social Care Level 3 I worked in a primary school and I have enjoyed every minute working there, also this sector helped me gain many skills and qualities to go into

To me, improving the quality of patient-physician interaction is of utmost importance, something I discovered when volunteering on the oncology floor at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Not long after I started, I struck up a conversation with the mother of a patient, who confessed how scared and alone she felt throughout her child’s treatments. I was grateful that she was able to confide in me, and knew that these feelings were normal when parents are faced with a cancer diagnosis. But I was bothered knowing that she didn’t feel comfortable talking to her child’s doctors about issues that weren’t directly related to medical treatment. After this experience, I started paying closer attention to how medical professionals interacted with both patients and their families. The quality of patient-physician interactions varied wildly between doctors, but I noticed that compassionate and enthusiastic interactions always had a